Reasonably Fine
by bisexualcharliedavis
Summary: Zad doesn't like it when people betray him. Which is unfortunate for Mikka.


To preface this, I've only ever seen one episode of this show, and that was the episode with Charlie Cousins (Or Charles Cousins, as he was known back then, lol) So if I'm honest, I only wrote this because I'm pretty dang thirsty for 2002 Charlie. *Shrugs* Not sure how accurate to cannon it is, but if it turns out too be not very much, then i apologize and consider it an AU. :)

...

Orla's are not built for cold, Mikka thought as he rested his head against the frozen stone of his new home. Sure, winters could be cold in the forest, but they were never this cold, not as far as he knew. He quite badly wants to pull his knees up to his chin and try and preserve the little warmth his body was able to create. But he knows better then that.

He passes the time away by thinking of his sister.

…

"Father wanted us back ages ago!" He complained, trailing after Alima as she swung herself up onto the next branch of the tree they were in the process of climbing.

"Father can wait, Mikka!" She called back, already almost at the top of the climbable part of the tree. Mikka, as per usual, was a few steps behind her. It was easier to defend her from the back, anyway. He watched her boots disappear up the tree before he followed after her. After several moments, he took a seat next to her on the branch, and they gazed out over the land their people had lived on for generations.

"Look Mikka!" She laughed, her small hand pointing out at the spread of trees and dirt that made up their home. In the distance, over the taller trees, so much taller then any of them, the sun cast an orange glow over everything, washing them in the colour of fire.

"It's pretty." He offered, after a moment. She hit him lightly with her shoulder.

"It's beautiful." She informed him, and put her head on his shoulder. He doesn't return the gesture, just follows her gaze out into the distance, thinking about how mad Father was going to be with him when they went home.

…

Even as children, Mikka was considered the weaker of the two of them. He'd been born sickly and spent a fair amount of his childhood ill as well. As a result, he lacked a good deal of the training that Alima had had in hers.

He had never been overly upset by it, because even though she may be a better warrior then he himself, she was also just that. A warrior. Not like that was a bad thing, not by any stretch. But she also relied on honor and rules, where as he himself couldn't afford that, so he more often tried to outsmart his enemies. To mixed results.

He also had the benefit of remembering their mother. His mother died when Alima was two, from a snakebite (or that's what they told him, anyway), he was seven then, and he remembered her quite clearly. Alima was not quite so lucky. He wondered, when they'd been teenagers, if she was sad that she hadn't been close with her but he doubts that it really matters in the end.

…

It would have been merciful if they had simply executed him on the spot. But according to the guards who were posted outside his 'cell' constantly, King Zad didn't deal well with tratiors. You hardly had to tell Mikka that, given his current position. He gazed out the cell door window to the corridor, and then put his head back onto the wall.

He knew that since Alima and the BeastMaster's escape from their cell, and his own escape from Lokar that the idea of simply working him to death was not unpleasant enough for them. No, they wanted him to pay in a way that was so much worse then anything else they could have done to him. He sighed rather pitifully, and turned his attention to his ruined feet.

They had crippled him a dozen times over by now, each break was hardly allowed to heal before it was rebroken. He assumed this was to prevent him escaping, but he wondered where they thought he would go if he could. No point in returning to his tribe now. He couldn't do much in the way of work, and his fingers were so mangled by now he doubted that there would be any other things he could do for the tribe anyhow.

Alima was a capable leader, and as his father's other child, she would inherit his small group as well as her own much larger one. He thought often about his sister. They'd been close as children, this stemmed from his inability to keep friends for ay length of time. She was never like that. She always made friends, he couldn't. With no other family as far as he knew, it was expected that he'd be attached to her.

…

It was not unusual for Mikka to be ill. It seemed that since his birth, he was always fighting off some illness or another. To Alima, it never made much difference. She shared the tent with him, regardless of his health. If he ever questioned him about, she would smuggley reply that if she was infected by his illness, then she could fight it off much easier then he could. Depending on how ill he was, Mikka usually accepted that as the truth.

The actual truth was, she liked spending time with him. She had plenty of friends in the tribe, but she had no qualms in rubbing the nose of people who insulted Mikka into the ground. Mikka himself never knew about how people talked about him, and always told her some kind of story about how brothers were meant to protect their sisters not the other way around if she ever tried to bring it up to him.

Now, at age eleven, five year old Alima sat by his side, cross legged, telling him about her day.  
"I saw a Golden Aurex." She told him, "It was so pretty." She sighed, "It was down by the water, eating the flowers." She told him, "You'd have loved it Mikka." She promised, "I'll show you next year, promise." She laughed.

Mikka laughed slightly from his sick bed, and rolled to face her. "You think?"  
"I know!" She exclaimed. "Father says that it's our duty as Orla's to protect them." She explained, "You'll help, won't you?"  
"Sure." He said, "When I'm better."  
"You're never better." She sighed, "Why are you so weak?"  
"Something about mother giving birth early." He scoffed, and turned away from him.  
"Sorry." She said, after a moment. "I did not mean to insult you."

"I'm not insulted." He replied. "I'll be well soon enough." Alima doesn't believe him, but offers him no response.

…

There are few certainties in Mikka's life now days. There were two things that stayed constant. One, there was never any natural light in his cell. He knew this was just another torture tactic. He'd lived outside his whole life, suddenly being away from the forest was alsmost as bad as the injuries.

The second was that they were going to hurt him every day. The how changed, but they hurt him and there was nothing he could do about it but sit here, if his hands weren't broken, then he could hold them around his shoulders and rock back and fourth trying to comfort himself. If they were, then he could lie against the wall, resting his shoulder against the unrelenting wall, wondering why he'd been forsaken.

…

By the time he is fifteen, he is almost as strong as the other boys. His father is proud, and he helps the others hunt and find food in the forest. Alima trains to be a warrior. She's very good at it, he thinks, as he watched her take down a man twice her size from the sidelines. She smiles at him. He smiles back.

…

The door opens. He squints his eyes, trying to make the figure out but he can't really. The man walks up to him, and as per usual, he does nothing except look away as he grabs Mikka by the back of his shirt and throws him to the ground.

He does his best to physically leave his body. To watch the pain inflicted on him from afar. It's so much easier that way. He considers, as he watches the bat collide with his stomach over and over again, that he's never actually seen King Zad. He will probably never see him. He will probably be here until they beat him so badly that he dies. Hm. Sounds about right.

He never thought he could deserve such punishment. But then again, he had ruined part of the forest. He had left his sister unprotected. Maybe he did deserve this, he thinks, maybe this was his father punishing his ignorance? He closed his eyes and wondered if they would finally let him die.

…

He was five when Alima was born. He wandered though the village bored on that night in particular because neither his mother or father wanted to play with him, and there was little to do on his own, especially now when all the other children had gone to bed. He wandered past people and fires until he came to the edge of where he was allowed in the village. The tall trees beyond called for him and the monkeys rustled in the leaves above his head. He is almost considering leaving when behind him he hears  
"Mikka!" Turning, he sees the healer running towards him. He turns to face him with raised eyebrows. There were few times when people thought to send after him.

"Your father would like to see you." He said, clapping the young boy on the back and leading them back towards their little hut.

His father emerges holding a bundle of soft pelts up to his chest. He goes onto his toes curious as to what the bundle is.

"Mikka." His father said, rubbing his hair kindly, "This is Alima. She's your sister." He said, kneeling down to show him.

Personally, Mikka thought she looked a bit ugly, all wrinkled up and covered in white stuff, but his father seemed proud and he's a polite child so he accepts the bundle into tiny arms.

"You must look after her." His father explains, "You're her brother." He explains, which Mikka finds a bit useless, given that he knows what a brother is but he doesn't say anything in reply. His father takes her back, and leads him to their little hut to see their mother again. Some people stop to look at Alima and Mikka can't help but wonder if his own birth was such a spectacle.

…

The man leaves him after what feels like years. He returns to his body. His everything hurts. He can't really move, because every piece of skin on his bones aches and every pore seems to be leaking pain. There's blood settling under his head, sticking his longer hair to his head and leaving him with a headache.

He cries. Orla warriors aren't meant to cry, but he supposes he's hardly an Orla warrior anymore. Can't walk, can't hold a spear or swing an axe, Alima would be disappointed, he thinks. Would probably tell him to stop lazing about. He just sighs softly, and closes his eyes, hoping that maybe he wouldn't wake up.

There's no point in trying to sleep, not really. Everything hurts far too badly, so he uses the only thing they've left him with. His mind. He thinks about Alima, about the features they shared in their faces. Their matching incisor teeth. The hands she got from their mother, and eyes from their father. And he misses her. He tightly wraps his arms around his chest, and tries to pretend that it's her. He's been alone for a long time.

…

He has attempted to stop his suffering before. He tried biting at his wrists until the skin broke and allowing himself to bleed to death. One of the guards caught him with his bleeding wrist, they stitched him back up and threw him back in. He must have screamed afterwards until his voice broke because he can still remember the sudden break in his mournful screams as his voice cracked and his yells became little more then soft moans.

He tried again, much later, by simply not eating the food they sometimes gave him, at first, they didn't realize, but when they did, Mika clearly remembers them forcing his jaw wide open with a block of wood, and jamming a wooden funnel sort of a thing into his throat. It burned and they didn't stop tipping whatever was in their bucket down his throat until his vision was littered in black spots and his limbs lay still.

He wonders, that afternoon, (Not that he was aware) how easy it would be to end it all right now. Probably not too hard, now he was so weak. If only he could move, he though, gazing down at his ruined fingers. They still sort of worked, not enough that he'd ever be useful to the tribe again, but enough that he could be useful to himself right now. He gazed at the plate of food in front of him, and slowly dragged it up to his legs. Picking at it absently, he managed to swallow down a little bit of it, but his stomach rolls furiously in his body and his legs ache just as bad.

The thick walls around him that will probably provide his tomb offer him little warmth and little comfort as he states at the door that sealed him off from the rest of where ever he was. He thinks, rather disdainfully, that he misses being in the forrest. He once thought that he would love to leave the woods, but now he would do anything to go back.

He shifts slightly, before slowly wrapping his arms around his shoulders, and then begins to rock, tilting his upper body forward, and pulling it back.

Trying to move his battered ribs in a self comforting way, he tilted back and fourth again, eyes damp and body sore.

…

The quiet was almost deafening to Alima. After so long, she knew what she had to do. At first, she'd been content to accept Mikka's disappearance as him abandoning them. It was certainly out of character for him, but she'd simply let it come to pass. It took her almost a year to admit to herself that Mikka would never walk out on his tribe like that.

Their father hadn't raised him to be a deserter. In the dark of the night, in the little hut, she missed him. Even in the time he'd spend in his ill fated attempt at cutting down the trees, he'd still been her big brother, and she'd still missed him.

…

They had always shared a room, it was hardly something unusual. Most siblings did. When she was six, and he was twelve summers old, she quietly shook him awake. Mikka blinked up at her with his large blue eyes starring back into her deep brown ones.

"I had the dream again." She said, softly. Mikka sighed softly, and shifted to the side, opening his arm and allowing her into his little nest of pelts. She joined him, and wiggled up close, resting her head on his chest, while he played lightly with her braided hair.

"Did you?" He murmured, still mostly asleep apparently. She nodded and pressed her small face into his chest as deep as she could.

"It's so awful." She whispered. "They stabbed me with a big stick until I was bleeding." She mumbled as he pulled his blankets over her as well. She always came to him with her bad dreams rather then their father, who simply told her that Orla warriors should not cry. Mikka didn't seem to care one way or another.

"No one will stab you while I am protecting you." He assured her, holding her tight while he let out a sleepy little sigh and seemed to have fallen asleep. Alima has no desire to sleep after that, but she does watch him rest, his eyelids flicker with his dreams. She wondered what he dreamed of.

…

He dreamed of Alima sometimes. He dreamed about her destroying the guards who held him prisoner, he dreamed about following her on healed feet out into the forrest, about the feeling of leaves under his ruined feet and the wind in his hair. He dreamed about his freedom. About climbing trees in barefoot and about picking flowers

He dreamed about what he no longer had, and woke up sad.

…

They both sat by the fire as it burned. With their father gone now, Mikka was apparently meant to pick up where he left off right away. He had a sad sort of look on his face, the sort that she'd only ever seen him with once before. She sat by his side, following his gaze into the orange fire. He was deep in contemplation and she had no desire to upset him. She put her head on his shoulder, following his gaze into the deep reds and oranges.

For the first time in his life, he doesn't pay her any attention.

..

He was a fool, he thinks, gazing into the darkness and rocking his body back and forwards. The deal with Lokar had seemed too good to be true, he knew, that it probably was. And yet, despite this whole situation being Lokar's fault, he wondered why he was the one who paid for it in such a way. Lokar had simply been executed. (he knows because he saw. After shooing away the Beast Master's tiger, and then shooing away Lokar, and after he found out who ratted him out, they let him watch it go down. It took four goes for the dull axe to finally kill him. He never thought he could feel sorry for Lokar) He wishes that he'd just been executed. He guesses that's why he's still alive.

Why kill a man when you can watch him suffer for years? He wonders. It doesn't seem fair to him but as per usual, he doesn't put up a fight when the guard enters the room. He mightn't enjoy this but he enjoyed the punishments far far less.

…

The door opens again. Mikka sighs in preperation. It wasn't often they came this close together. His body hadn't even begun to heal from the last time. Perhaps they're finally going to put him out of his misery. Wouldn't that be lovely? He allowed himself a slight of hope. Then they're running.

Oh.

That's a change.

No one runs to Mikka anymore.

And then drops to their knees.

Oh.

"Mikka!" Hearing his name sounds quite foreign in his ears, after so long of either quiet or names with a meaning that he didn't know. (But could assume them to be bad) then his mind finally worked, and he came up with a match to the voice. Alima. He must be dying. He must finally be dying, and she was here to take him away.

"Mikka." Softer this time, arms around his upper body, pulling him away from the wall and towards her. He doesn't fight. He never fights. "Mikka." Like a chant, she continues to say his name, over and over while his arms uncurl and slowly reach for her, only to stop at the last second and pull away as men approached behind her, unable to tell that they were his, well, her, men, that they were not going to hurt him.

Then, he went upwards, onto his feet, her arm around his shoulders while his ruined feet that didn't even look like feet struggled to hold him up. One of the men took him carefully, fingers run over his exposed ribs, and he hears a soft stutter to his left, he resists the being held in order to seek out Alima amongst the people. If he's going to die, then he's glad that it's going to be with her.

…

He hallucinates a lot these days. It might be the hunger or the head injuries. He's not sure what causes them. He's hallucinated everyone from Alima to the Beastmaster coming to collect him from this misery. But no one ever does. He doesn't know what he expects.

…

His father explains it to him when he's a teenager. Explains that his mother wasn't an Orla. That his memories of his mother was not the same mother that Alima had. It sort of makes sense now, but not enough sense to explain it to him why his father would hide such a detail from them. But now he's dead Mikka supposed that he's never going to know.

It's not unusual, for their father to hide things from them, but somehow, knowing that he wasn't a real Orla hurt him so much more then anything else his father could have done to him. And it made breaking away from the tribe to cut down the trees that much easier.

…

It would appear that his body has finally given up on him. Lying still on the floor, he cannot even will himself to seek out food from the tray in the middle of the room. Fever rises in him, and blood pools under him. King Zad must have decided that he is worthy of death, then. He'd be a liar if he said that he wasn't grateful.

If he dies now, then it all will end. He is at peace with himself. Relief covers him in waves.

Then there is searing agony again. Light filters into the room and there is hands around him, and the constant mantra of his name being repeated, over and over and over. He can hardly hear the voice in question over the pounding in his head. The agony in his body is burning brightly as he is lifted again.

There are hands on his face and on his chest, rubbing over him, coating him in their being. The room is rapidly vanishing behind him as they leave. He had always thought his death would be more dramatic then this, but at the same time, he can't say that he's too worried to be saying goodbye to this world.

…

Alima has never been more livid in her life, seeing her brother in such a state. Moving past slain guards, the two burly men behind her carried Mikka's prone form out of the cavernous caves and into the light. He looks so much worse out here that a small part of her wants to take him back into the darkness. He was so thin that she could see virtually every one of his bent ribs standing at attention on his chest.

So thin that his shoulder blades looked more like birdskulls trying to escape his skin that seemed to be pulled far too tightly around him. That was not even the worst part, she thinks, as her eyes drift to his feet, swollen and purple. Even amongst the damage, she could see the broken bones and damage inflicted on him. She knew just by looking that he'd never walk on those feet again.

She knew Mikka's pride. She'd known him her whole life and she wonders, only for a second, if would it would simply be kinder to set him adrift in a lake and watch him sink to the bottom. But she doesn't, because she's a good sister.

It's a very long walk back to their home that involves crossing the Kunja Bog again. They end up resting for the night in a small clearing that she knows of. Mikka is awake, but not really. His eyes are open but he seems to be unable to see. She lays him on animal skins by the fire and sends her men to rest, insisting on staying by his side herself that night.

She carefully took one hand between her own and looked it over. He was missing two nails and the tip of his little finger. She slowly compared is ghostly white skin to her own much more tanned hand. His nails are ragged and cracked, her are longer and better cared for. "Oh Mikka." She whispers, bringing their joined hands to her forehead and allowing her face to scrunch up in what may be tears. She doesn't cry, however, since Orla warriors do no weep. "What have they done too you?" She asked him quietly. Mikka turns his head to face her, but other then that, he offers her little more in reply but a slow blink of unseeing eyes. The water on the fire is bubbling away now, so she breaks away from him to mix up a drink with roots and leaves to help take the pain away and allow him to sleep.

She hadn't anticipated how hard it was going to be to get him to drink. Eventually, she managed to get his top half onto her lap, against her chest, and carefully tip small amounts of the drink into his mouth, relieved that at least his swallow reflex seems to be undamaged. She's not sure what she would have done then. Alima lay him back on the animal pelts and carefully covered him with a thick covering, hoping that he was at least a little bit comfortable.

There is nothing but the crackling of embers and Mikka's laboured breathing as Alima lay by his side long into the night, unable to fall asleep.

…

The journey continues the next morning. Alima is unsure if Zad will chase them or not, but he hardly seemed to be looking after his cave he had been holding Mikka in, given it had three guards who hadn't changed at all while she'd watched them. True, she felt Mikka would not appreciate her killing them, but she supposed he would be less appreciative if she left him there to die. With more time, they'd rigged up a carry bed to put Mikka on for the trip. She brought four men with her. Three and herself hold the bed while one moves in front on them, assuring safe passage. Mikka is still sleeping, awake infrequently, and when he is awake, he just watched the sky over head, until she feels compelled to cover his face with cloth to prevent him starring into the sun and ruining his eyes.

The trip is uneventful for the most part. Zad's men never show up to chase them down and steal Mikka away. Mikka remains catatonic. The sky remains clear. When they stop, she does her best to ensure that Mikka is not in too much pain, and that he retains some dignity.

Night is surely the worst. It's not that Alima was scared of the dark. (Orla warriors fear nothing) it's just that she didn't like what was coming. She hated the not knowing part of it all. She also designated herself to sit as guard so that she wouldn't have to sleep. She passes the time by recounting their childhood adventures to Mikka.

"Do you remember when we got lost in the forest?" She asked softly, stroking a strand of dark hair out of his face. Without red pigment ad sunlight it was so much darker then she remembered. "Of course I was the one who insisted we should go out that far, you only went along so that you could protect me."She murmured, "We climbed the biggest tree in the whole jungle, and stood on the top branch, yelling our names out and watching the birds fly away." She laughed, softly. "You thought father was going to be so mad, and...I...I did not care care." She murmured, "I just liked to see where it was that we lived." She murmured, lying down so that they were on the same level. "And you just liked looking after me." She whispered. She rolled onto her back, looking up into the sky with a soft and sad sigh. "I am going to look after you." She promised, after a moment. "I promise you, Mikka. I am going to make sure that you are safe for the rest of the your life." Mikka, predictably, offers her nothing in reply but his struggled breath. She sighed softly, and took his hand between two of her own again, carefully threading her fingers between what was left of his. She had no idea what she was going to do with him now but it would be over her cold and dead body that he would be left behind.

…

He is certain that he's not in the cell anymore. He watches the world pass him by with little interest. He's dying anyway, so why not enjoy his last moments. He's not awake too often, but when he is, he takes a great interest in watching the sky pass him by. He stares until the sun burns his eyes and delicate hands cover his face with animal pelts. It's pleasantly warm, not that he feels compelled to inform the hands that it is. He's not even one hundred percent sure that the hands are real and not.

They stop, at times, and they lie on the ground. He sleeps though most of these times, making use of the time that he wasn't moving to lie still and quiet and just be. Occasionally, he's awake enough that he can feel the hands around him gently prodding him to drink from a small cup. Whatever it's contents are they put him to sleep. Which is perfectly fine by him, and not for the first time since his leaving the cell, he just wonders why bother to save him at all. If they're Orla's, then they would have no bussiness in saving him because he had nothing to offer. If they were someone else why bother? He never thinks about it too much, however, because he is too tired and he just wants to rest.

Mikka also supposes that it might be them taking him to his death, which is also fine by him, really. Perhaps they'll throw him in the Kunja Bog or something equally as awful, but still a way that would still give him a memorable death. But he supposes that there's no chance of that, when he's more awake because that was too close to his people and that would probably end up a danger to them. Not for the first time in recent memory, he misses Alima. He wants to go home.

…

The Kunja Bog presents them with a challenge. After a great deal of diliberation, they decide that the best way to move Mikka across, would be to simply progress as they had the whole way here. Mikka is not awake. Alima relinquishes her grip, and allows one of her men to take the last handle so that she can direct them across the bog.

It's a painfully slow trip, each step is planned in advance, insuring that Mikka is never jostled too much, or in any danger of being sucked into the sand. The jump is the part that scares her most. Even before all of this, Mikka could never make the jump on his own, instead relying on the thick vines to swing him over the bog and to the safety of the other side. Eventually, they came up with a way to pass him over, securing both him to the bed, and then the bed to a vine. They carefully swung him over into the waiting arms of two other men, who followed the bed, and landed on the other side.

Alima has never been so relieved to be away from the bog in her life.

…

Since Mikka's disappearance, they'd turned his little shack into a storage shed. But Alima had no intention of putting him there anyway. She had them move him into her own lean too, and then set about calling on local healers to tend to his worst wounds. With a lot of them tended too, the older woman told her it was up to him to survive now, that she'd done all she could. Alima sighed softly, and the woman just patted her on the arm and told her that she had done the best she could and that if Mikka passed it might even be for the best. Alima proceeded to shoo her from the tent, and then lie by Mikka's side, taking his limp arm and draping it around her, outraged that anyone could suggest such a thing to her.

Certainly, he would have little use to the tribe as a worker, but if his mind was intact then she would have him work out plans to save food for the winter time, he'd always been so good at that. And if he'd lost his mind...Alima wasn't quite sure what she was going to do then. She watched him sleep with weary eyes, before following him into a dreamless, restless sleep.

…

Time passes slowly now. Each second seems to drag on for an eternity to him. He's left one cell and been brought to what seems to be a new cell, or at least, at first. When he'd opened his tired eyes, and gazed around, Mikka noticed a quite unfarmillar weight by his side. Gazing down, he saw his sister pressed against his side, face hidden in the animal pelts drapped over his upper body.

He continued to stare at her for what felt like hours, trying to figure out if she was real or not. If she was, then where had she come from? If she wasn't, then how could he possibly imagine something so real? It stretches on for minutes that turn to hours. She stirrs, and opens her brown eyes to meet his blue ones. "Mikka." She whispers, and one hand gently touches his hand in a way that is foreign to him. Even before all of this, Alima was not an Orla known for her being gentle. The hand touches him and out of habit, he flinches hard enough to spook Alima and remove her hand from her cheek. He says nothing.

…

His eyes almost have recognition in them. Like he was finally seeing. She reaches one hand to just touch him, to assure both him and her that she was real, and that he was real, but when he flinches, she moves back, cursing herself for being such a fool. Of course Mikka is not going to be interested in contact given what he just went though. She sits, and sighs softly, and then, as quickly as the fog lifted, she realized his eyes had clouded over again, and he was no longer looking at her, but rather, though her.

Orla warriors are not meant to weep, but it's hard for her not too.


End file.
